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In April, on the morning before the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Deadline gathered the stars of Netflix’s The Diplomat, Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell, and the show’s executive producer and showrunner Deborah Cahn, for a conversation with Irish Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason at her residence.
During that conversation, Nason said that she sees “a lot” of similarities between her life and the show, but quipped, “Some things I haven’t seen are the skinny dipping or the midnight feasts. In the basement of stately homes, I don’t do much of that.”
Russell and Sewell also spoke about the process of making the first season, with the latter explaining that their chemistry as two married, thrill-seeking foreign ambassadors was “there from day one, and if it’s there, leave it alone.”
For her role as Foreign Ambassador Kate Wyler, Russell said that she does research on stories based loosely on real-life events, but “at the same time, you have to make it new, and you have to make for what excites you or makes you upset in that moment.”
Watch the full video above, to see the stars unpack Season 1 just in time for the second season, which debuts on Netflix Thursday. After that refresher, check out the interview below, where Cahn spoke with Deadline to tee up Season 2.
DEADLINE: So, we end Season 1 with a car bombing, which leaves Hal’s fate up in the air. Now, we know he’s alive, but is this bombing going to alter the relationship between Hal and Kate? If so, how?
CAHN: Sure, it is. There are certain things that happen — world crises, personal crises, health crises, are at the top of the list that just shape your relationships and upend them completely. And this is one of those events. I think the thing that is interesting to me about the relationship between Kate and Hal is that it is fragile and durable at the same time, and there are so many things that are kind of on the list of maybe smaller, petty irritations that could tear it apart, but then, very quickly, in the face of life and death, these two people are just clinging to each other in a way that seems like it is objectively right, and will go on forever.
When I was younger, my camera had wide and telephoto [options], and you could just flick from one to the other, and that was it. There was not a lot of zooming in and out on my little Sony, and I think that’s what we’re doing is just constantly shifting in and out from these different places where you make a read on a relationship, somebody else’s or your own. Figuring out how your fixed opinion on yourself and somebody else can really turn over 180 degrees in an instant.
DEADLINE: Can you tell me about getting Allison Janney as the Vice President? Was the character conceptualized first, or were you already hoping to reunite with Janney?
CAHN: So Grace Penn is mentioned in the very first episode. When we were first breaking the series, there was this notion that we would tell a really big Grace Penn story in the first season, and it somehow kept falling out. We were more interested in Kate and what Kate was going through. It was like a seed that we had put in the ground, and at some point, out was gonna sprout something. As soon as it became clear that Allison might be a real possibility, it was completely obvious that that’s the story that was waiting to be told when it first came up. I didn’t really believe that it was gonna happen. I couldn’t imagine that she would say yes. I was so excited when she did, and then it was a relief to know, as soon as the idea was on the table, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, no, we know what story. We know that story. We already wrote that story. That story is ready to go.’
DEADLINE: Before The Diplomat, you flexed your political drama muscle with The West Wing and Homeland. In what ways do you see influences from those in your work on this series, and in what ways do you feel like you’re taking a departure?
CAHN: What I took away [from those series] was the understanding that you don’t actually have to be an expert in something to write about, that there are smart people in the world that are willing to sit down and talk to you about what they do, and there are ways to take those real life experiences and build them into fiction in a way that still feels authentic without necessarily being realistic. I think The West Wing opened a door for a lot of people into — what does it mean to work for the government? Not only showing the great successes and failures…but what goes on during the day and what does the work look like. It was exciting for me to be able to do that with the Foreign Service, to be able to do that with people who work in other countries on behalf of this one. It wasn’t something that I knew coming into this.
I think on the simplest level, what does it mean to be the person who says, ‘We’re going to have a conversation. We’re not going to have a battle among tanks and weapons.’
How do those conversations start? How do they continue? How do you revive them once they fall apart? All of that just seemed like something that I wanted to know for my sense of the world. There was an idealism to The West Wing, which Aaron Sorkin was interviewed last week and said that that wouldn’t ring as true today. That is probably true in terms of how we’re dealing with stories on The Diplomat. These aren’t things that can resolve with ease in any way. We don’t really get to the end of the story here. Some things get solved, and then we find ourselves in the midst of another quagmire, because it’s just tough for people, for countries, to get along. I think I wanted to represent the fact that people do come into this work with tremendous idealism and maintain it throughout their careers, but then do learn that the making of the sausage is just complicated and hard and needs to be done. You’ve got to be out there every day willing to do it, whether or not you like the government that you’re representing in this year or that.
DEADLINE: Season 2 is shorter, which you have said was your decision, but how did that impact the pacing this season?
DEBORA CAHN: It certainly makes it much more of a single, cohesive narrative. There’s no sense that you’re going to sort of wander off for one episode and think about this little area of storytelling, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. I grew up in the world of broadcast television where we did 22-25 episodes a season, and it’s just a much different style of storytelling. You’re bringing people into a world and allowing them to live there as residents for a period of time, as opposed to taking them on a single journey that’s sort of hurtling through space. So there’s always a part of me that is interested in the kind of stories that you could tell when you had a little bit more time. I loved writing about minutia. I love writing about things that people don’t really think about, that I don’t really think about, and then you give it a little bit more attention and you realize that there’s a whole world there too, but it was nice to just be on this train moving fast.
DEADLINE: Is there anything in Season 2 that you didn’t get to explore as much as you wish you could’ve?
CAHN: Well, the nice thing is that we know that we’re continuing in Season 3, so the things that we didn’t get to, we will.
